perjantai 5. huhtikuuta 2013

Decorative mon

I uploaded pictures of decorative mons into my flickr while uploading photos of the History of Women's Costume in Japan. I was puzzled about them, because I had never seen those kind of mons before.

See what I mean? I've only seen geometric mons in use, but not these pretty embroidered mons. Which lead me to look back in the book and see what kind of mons where in use before this. There wasn't any mons on clothing. I was a little perplexled, but while getting in info for my last post, I opened the book on the mon section and Liza Dalby writes like this about the history of mon:

The social significance of crests has varied throughout japanese history. Heian nobility used motifs on carriages and personal articles, although not, apparently, on clothing. During the Kamakura era, and with the rise of the samurai, crests were writ large on banners, armor, tents, and other military paraphernalia, indentifying friend from foe on the battlefield. During the Tokugawa period, crests were divided into heraldic and decorative usage. Regional lords and samurai adopted certain mon as family insignia, but at the same time townspeople developed the inherent design possibilities of crests purely for fashionable clothing.

So the decorative mons that have puzzled me in this book, could be the design mons the townspeople of Tokugawa period developed for the fashion of the day. It also explains why I could not find any mons before this time period, because there was no mons in kimonos before this time.

In the few images the book has about the decorative mons the floral design seems to have been rather popular. Atleast all the images depict a floral motif.

During the same time period there was also the mons as we know them today. If we take Liza Dalby's word for it, this woman is part of a samurai family and higher class than the ladies wearing the decorative mons, if I have understood my reading correctly.